Suppose you have taught your child the 16 consonant sounds which don’t vary at the beginning of words: b, d, f, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, qu, r, t, v, x, and z. Now you are ready to teach vowel sounds.
Explain what vowels are
Because you will be using the words vowel and consonant with your child as you teach, make sure you take time to explain what these words mean. Vowel refers to five letters all the time (a, e, i, o, and u) and two letters sometimes (y and w). Consonant refers to all the other letters and to y and w most of the time. For now you can leave out the y and w, but when you teach small words like by and now, mention that y and w act as vowels sometimes.
Should you say short / closed vowels? Or long / open vowels?
Today many support materials refer to vowels followed by a consonant in the same syllable (cat, hot) as closed vowels. Years ago these vowels were called short vowels, and they were pictured with a curve over the vowel as in ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ and ŭ. Similarly, vowels coming at the end of a syllable (go, hero) are today called open vowels by some reading support workbooks. Previously they were called long vowels and pictured with a horizontal line over them as in ā, ē, ī, ō, and ū. I will use the terms short and long since those are the terms most parents recognize. I will use markings over vowels such as ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ and ŭ when referring to a particular short vowel sound and ā, ē, ī, ō, and ū when referring to a particular long vowel sound.
Naming vowel sounds as short or long is important because we need a vocabulary to use with children when we refer to vowels pronounced like their letter names and vowels pronounced more softly. Whichever terms you use, make sure your child understands them.
Teaching words with a ă sound
While you are teaching the 16 consistent consonant-letter sounds, you can begin to teach one short vowel sound. I recommend starting with the letter ă because almost all phonics support materials start with the vowel ă, and because ă might be the easiest short vowel sound to master. The support materials I suggest for my students are the Explode the Code series. That series starts with ă words.
When I am teaching in person, I use flash cards with pictures of words beginning with ă such as alligator, astronaut, and apple. I recommend you teach your child to say “ă as in apple” to reinforce the letter connected to the sound.
Choose five or six consonant letter sounds your child has mastered. Using letter tiles, form two and three letter words such as am, an, at, bat, bam, tan, and mat, etc. Place the letter tiles for one word an inch or so apart and ask your child to say the sounds, keeping the picture of the apple on the table too, for reference. Repeat saying the sounds as you slowly move the letters closer and closer together until the child says the word. It might take many tries, but usually there is a Eureka! moment when the child realizes she is reading a word, not just letter sounds. Reading teachers call these tiny words CVC words, meaning consonant-vowel-consonant words.
Gradually add more consonant sounds and form more words with ă as the vowel sound. If the child loses interest, one way to extend the lesson is to use her name and write a goofy sentence such as Kim is a pan or Kim is a map. Another way is to use your name and have her end the sentence. Mom is a ____. Teach her that the vowel goes first or in the middle. Try mispronouncing a word she writes and ask her if you said it correctly.
You can buy magnetic cards which you can cut into small rectangles to attach to the back of letter tiles. Then you can work in a metal lasagna pan or pizza pan or on the refrigerator. If your child is four or five, a short lesson (ten minutes) teaching in one mode followed by another short lesson in another mode (writing words on an iPad or laptop, writing in a workbook) might be all she can handle for one session. I have given one-hour lessons to a four-year-old, but I needed to have six mini-lessons to sustain her interest.
Teaching words with a ŏ sound
When, after several days or weeks, you are sure your child can read ă words, move on to ŏ words. Create a reference card—an octopus, for example. Work on two and three letter ŏ words such as on, off, odd, Oz, nod, fob, and Bob, etc. After several days or weeks—whatever it takes—mix ŏ words with ă words.
To reinforce your work, read together picture books. When you come to a word she can pronounce, point to it and ask her to say the word. Two or three times are enough to show her that what she is learning applies to her real world.
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I suggest you give your child a pretest to see what reading skills your child has learned well, and what ones he has not yet grasped.
The words on this pretest are more or less divided into four kinds of words in this order:
1. Short (closed) vowel, one-syllable words. These include one- and two-letter words, words beginning or ending with blends and digraphs (black, church) words which end in twin consonants (fell, jazz), words which end in “ck,” and words to which an “s” can be added to make plural words or certain verbs (maps, runs).
2. Long (open) vowel, one-syllable words. These include words ending with silent “e,” words with double vowels which have only one vowel pronounced (goes, pear), and certain letter combinations (ild, old). They also include words with “oi,” “oy,” “ow” and “ou” letters.
3. Two– and three-syllable words which follow the above rules (catnip, deplete) and two- and three-syllable words which don’t follow the above rules but which follow a pattern (light, yield). These words include words with certain suffixes (le, ies) and words with a single consonant between two vowels (robin, motel).
Second, buy two copies of “Explode the Code” workbooks 1, 1 ½, 2 and 2 ½. (Eventually, buy the next sets in this series, but for starts, these workbooks are enough.) This series teaches reading using a phonics-based approach. Kids like it because of the silly illustrations. Have the child start reading while you follow along on your copy, noting and correcting mistakes. Eventually, the child might do some of the pages for homework or with his parents.
Third, buy a set of letter tiles. You can use the tiles from a Scrabble game or from Bananagrams. Or use a keyboard. What you want to do is to introduce, teach and review new concepts. using tiles or computer words. If you are teaching short a, for example, manipulate the tiles so the child can see them to form “cat” and then “hat” and then “fat,” etc. Changing the first letter while keeping the ending vowel and consonant is easier for beginning readers to decode. Using tiles or computer-generated words enables you to go quickly. Later, you can move from “mat” to “mate” or from “mick” to “mike” and back and forth quickly to show differences in spellings and sounds.
Fourth, recommend to the child’s parents that the child watch the Netflix series “Alphablocks,” an animated series using silly letter characters to teach phonics. This British series offers tiny segments of three or four minutes to teach particular phonics skills. Even three-year-olds will learn to recognize letters from watching this series. Older children will be able to read words as they pop up on the screen.
comicphonics for early readers 